Consequences: What Happens in Your Story Matters—and Gives You Structure

Let’s talk consequences.

Can you imagine if Dorothy hadn’t run to rescue her dog Toto? She’d have made it safely to the storm cellar and never gone to Oz (The Wizard of Oz). If Jeannette Walls’s parents had lived a conventional life, she’d never have lived in more than twenty places as a child, including a decrepit building in West Virginia (The Glass Castle). If Dan Harris hadn’t had a nervous breakdown on the air, he’d never have learned about meditation, and shared what he learned with others (10% Happier).

Books are about consequences. What characters do or don’t do matters. What the reader can learn or change matters. How your personal story transformed you matters.

Otherwise, where is the story?

So the important question becomes: are you leaving the consequences out?

Without Consequences, Nothing Changes

There’s a famous piece of writing advice from Chekhov that goes something like this: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”

Put another way, there must be a reason for what is/appears significant. (I say “appears” because you might inadvertently signal significance that you don’t mean—but we’ll return to that in a moment.)

Continuing with Chekhov’s gun, the question we as readers have is: why is it there? What’s going to happen? We suspect violence and dramatic action. That’s the consequence of the gun. If the rest of the story doesn’t deliver any violence or dramatic action—if no one ever touches, thinks about, or talks about the gun—you’ve lost the opportunity for a great story. Huh, we think. That’s boring.

Without consequences, nothing changes.

If Walls had grown up poor in West Virginia but otherwise had an ordinary childhood, there’d be no The Glass Castle. Her parents’ relationship and her family’s poverty created change.

We might want to yell at Dorothy, You’re in danger! when she’s chasing Toto. But characters don’t always make good choices. Her choice had consequences; these consequences included Dorothy learning lessons about bravery, and that there’s no place like home.

The reason we cringe when Dan Harris talks about his on-air breakdown is because we can imagine all of the consequences of this event…and he can, too! Terrible embarrassment—humiliation—losing his job! His breakdown had consequences…and—anyway, you get the picture.

Consequences are why we care about the story. Consequences create the opportunity for change.

Consequences and Book Structure

Great, consequences save your book from being boring. There’s more good news: consequences are a great way to create a structure for your book.

Fiction: use the principle of “ripple effects.” When a character says or does something, what happens as a result? When a character experiences an event, what happens as a result? What are the ripple effects of your scene, detail, or character behavior? Allow consequences to lead you to the next necessary scene.

Nonfiction: use the principle of “if this, then that.” If your book is how-to or personal development, build your structure around what readers will do/achieve/become if they follow your plan (you can also talk about what happens if they don’t, but positives are stronger than negatives). If your book is narrative, follow the chain of events or relationships. If [x], then [y].

Consequences are a great way for you to gauge what is important—or to signal importance. No consequences? NBD (no big deal). Also, NBD = no book development.

Back to Chekhov’s gun. What if you don’t want to signal violence or dramatic action? You should remove the mention of the gun. A gun always appears significant, and readers expect consequences from significant details. If it’s NBD, remove it from your book.

Bottom Line

Life has consequences, and so should your book. Consequences create space for change, keep your book from being boring, and are, in fact, the reason your reader is reading. Best of all, you can use consequences to organize your book structure. Where can you add more consequences to your book?

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Not sure whether your book has enough consequences, or if they are strong enough? Let’s get together for a brainstorming session to figure it out.

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